Panama has started the process of removing three tankers from its ship registry after the United States placed them under sanctions over their links to Iranian oil shipments. The Panama Maritime Authority said it had restricted Bitu, Starway and Mackerel in its system and started proceedings to cancel their registrations. All three fly the Panamanian flag, and the cancellations are not yet complete.
The three were named in a sanctions list published by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on October 8, which designated 17 vessels involved in carrying Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and petrochemicals to markets in South and East Asia. Bitu, an asphalt and bitumen carrier, transported more than 170,000 barrels of Iranian bitumen and asphalt in 2026. Starway has carried more than 3 million barrels of Iranian naphtha since 2025, and Mackerel, a chemical and products tanker, more than 500,000 barrels of Iranian high sulphur fuel oil since December 2025.
Panama is acting under Executive Decree 512, issued in October 2024 to speed up the removal of vessels whose owners appear on international sanctions lists. By March 2025 the authority had cancelled the registrations of 107 sanctioned vessels, with another 18 in process. The authority also said none of the vessels on the United Kingdom’s October 8 shadow fleet list is currently registered in Panama, six having been removed before the list was published.
The registry cleanout matters to freight markets because it shrinks the pool of flags willing to carry sanctioned cargoes openly. It lands the same week that reports of possible US exemptions for shadow fleet tankers knocked Asian tanker shares sharply lower, a reminder that the sanctioned fleet’s legal status now moves mainstream shipping equities.